[…] But we’ve been looking at an ultimate box set of the Star Wars movies, all six of the movies. And what special features would be. And clearly these days, if you did an ultimate box set and didn’t do it in HD, Blu-ray, it just wouldn’t make any sense. So now it’s a matter of thinking okay, we’ve been thinking about this for a while, we know what kind of assets we want to use, we’ve done some work in cleaning up things, it’s really a matter of making that decision of when’s the best time to release it. […]

I hope so. Because I agree with you. Those have not been seen by the current generation of Star Wars fans and I think they hold up well for having been done at a certain time and certainly they are on the list for assets to be considered for an ultimate box set.

Steve McQueen romances Ali MacGraw out from underneath b.f. Robert Evans‘ watchful eye. We at TFH aren’t against remakes–some of our favorite movies are remakes– but the 1992 redo of Walter Hill’s screenplay from a Jim Thompson novel found it hard to top this 1972 original. One of director Sam Peckinpah’s smoothest (and some say most impersonal) productions, this is still a darn good thriller.

„Ein Stück vom Mond / Three-Cornered Moon“ [USA 1933, Elliott Nugent]
Often regarded as one the first genuine “screwball comedies”, Three-Cornered Moon stars Claudette Colbert as a level-headed member of an eccentric family who suddenly find their family fortune gone due to the stock market crash. Chaos ensues when they must find jobs and work for the first-time ever.

„Im Kreuzverhör / Maid of Salem“ [USA 1937, Frank Lloyd]
Inspired by the notorious Salem “witch trials”, Claudette Colbert stars as a free-thinking young woman who is falsely accused of casting evil spells by the Puritan townsfolk. Co-starring Fred MacMurray, The Maid of Salem is based on authentic records from 1692.

For the very forst time anywhere in the world in glorious1080p High definition and in its original aspect ratio The Black Shield of Falworth, starring TONY CURTIS & JANET LEIGH was Universal-International’s first feature in CinemaScope.

In one of his earliest and most dashing performances, a young Tony Curtis pursues his real-life bride Janet Leigh, while defending the British throne in this swashbuckling saga filled with jousts, jests and medieval super heroics.

Jean (Jean Yanne) and Catherine (Marlène Jobert) are a couple whose every move charts an advancement deeper into an emotional warzone. Theirs is the classic and the tragic case of an emotional abuse centred around a perplexing, but powerful, interdependency. As the moment approaches wherein the relationship can no longer perpetuate its cycle of weekend holidays, apologies, and submissions, Maurice Pialat discloses all the ways in which the future might be at once liberated, and enslaved, by the past.

Based on a novel by Pialat himself, and on the trauma of his own personal life in the years leading up to the film, Nous ne vieillirons pas ensemble was a smash-hit at the time of its release, and retains its power up to the present day. The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present Pialat’s second feature masterpiece for the first time on DVD in the UK.

New anamorphic transfer of the film in its original 1.66:1 aspect ratio

New and improved optional English subtitle translations

La Camargue (1966) – a short film by Maurice Pialat [6:00]

2003 interview with actress Marlène Jobert [19:00]

1972 interviews with Pialat and Jean Yanne, including two scenes deleted from the film [5:00]

1972 interview with François Truffaut about Pialat’s films [8:00]

1972 conversation between Pialat and associates about the film [12:00]

During the Apollo lunar missions from 1968 to 1972, those onboard were given 16mm cameras and told to film anything and everything they could, in space, in orbit, and on the surface of the moon itself. Two decades later, filmmaker Al Reinert went into the NASA vaults to create this extraordinary compendium of their journeys and experiences.

Assembled from hundreds of hours of the astronauts’ own footage, with a soundtrack made up of their memories and a specially composed score by Brian Eno, the film takes the form of one journey to the moon and back again, building with elegant simplicity and exquisite construction to create an overpowering vision of human endeavour and miraculous experience.

An intense study of the clash between medical ideals, the first full-length work from Georges Franju (Les yeux sans visage, Judex) is a gripping examination of postwar psychiatric care, boasting a memorable cast including Pierre Brasseur, Anouk Aimée, Charles Aznavour, Paul Meurisse, and Jean-Pierre Mocky.

Mocky plays François Gérane, an aimless young man whose delinquent tendencies cause his father to have him committed to a psychiatric ward. There, under the cold command of Dr. Varmont (Brasseur), he finds himself fighting for his dignity, sanity, and freedom, barely holding on through the new-found love of his girlfriend Stephanie (Aimée) and the promise of rival Dr. Emery’s (Meurisse) more humane techniques.

Compassionate yet unflinching, La Tête contre les murs is a bold precursor to the likes of Samuel Fuller’s Shock Corridor and Milos Forman’s One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, revealing Franju’s poetic gift for creating images both concrete and evocative, and an ominous hint of the clinical horrors yet to come in Les yeux sans visage. The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present the debut feature of a late-flowering, great filmmaker.

Von dem ehemals angekündigten Konzept eines Blu-ray+DVD-Combo-Sets ist Masters of Cinema nach dem Ergebnis einer Umfrage im Criterion-Forum wieder abgekommen.This new 2009 reissue of Sunrise (for the first time anywhere in the world in 1080p HD on Blu-ray, in addition to a newly mastered 2 x DVD set) contains two versions of the film: the previously released Movietone version, and an alternate silent version of the film recently discovered in the Czech Republic. The Blu-ray edition includes both versions in 1080p HD.

The culmination of one of the greatest careers in film history, F. W. Murnau’s Sunrise blends a story of fable-like simplicity with unparalleled visual imagination and technical ingenuity. Invited to Hollywood by William Fox and given total artistic freedom on any project he wished, Murnau’s tale of the idyllic marriage of a peasant couple (George O’Brien and Janet Gaynor) threatened by a Machiavellian seductress from the city (Margaret Livingston) created a milestone of film expressionism.